Google gets a lot of criticism—because, well, they’re Google. But the company also does a lot of behind-the-scenes work that often goes unnoticed.
With its 2024 Ads Safety Report, released today, Google is bringing to light the Herculean effort it undertakes to block malicious ads from its platforms.
According to the report, in 2024 Google removed over 5.1 billion ads.
It also restricted more than 9.1 billion ads.
In addition, Google says it suspended over 39.2 million advertiser accounts for bad behavior.
Why This Matters:
Google is facing a number of legal, regulatory, and antitrust challenges—which is nothing new. So it helps to spotlight the work it does to protect the ad-supported ecosystem and the open web. What other company has the scale, engineering power, and infrastructure to operate at Google’s level? Not many.
(It also raises a fair question: if antitrust action forces something like a Chrome spinout, would the outcome actually be better than what we have now? Moreover, would it be safer?)
Experts React:
Here’s what Keerat Sharma, VP and GM of Ad Privacy and Safety at Google, had to say about the report on LinkedIn:
“Our Ads Safety Report is such a good example of the work that this team does. Last year marked a big shift in how we use AI to safeguard consumers. LLMs are providing safety teams like ours with new opportunities to identify bad actors earlier than ever to keep people, advertisers and publishers safe, while helping legitimate businesses connect with their customers more quickly.
To put this into perspective: last year, we suspended over 39.2 million accounts in total, the vast majority of which were suspended before they ever served an ad.”
Our Take:
Adtech can feel full of doom and gloom—especially when it comes to Big Tech. But Google deserves real credit for the work it does here, much of it behind the scenes and largely unrecognized.
